antin

Best known as an immigrant autobiographer-primarily for the much-celebrated The Promised Land (1912) and From Plotzk to Boston-Mary Antin (1881-1949) wrote regularly for the Atlantic Monthly and played an influential role in the Boston and New York Jewish literary communities. With the publication of her letters, Evelyn Salz restores her
to a prominent place in American literature.

Throughout her life, Antin corresponded with a wide range of people from Israel Zangwill and Theodore Roosevelt to Zionists Horace Kallen and Bernard G. Richards, as well as writer and editor Louis Lipsky, industrialist Thomas A. Watson, and Rabbi Abraham Cronbach. Impressive in its scope and elegance, this correspondence (1899-1949) follows Antin’s life from a precocious adolescence through her years of fame and public involvement (after writing The Promised Land) and her slow descent into mental illness and eventual obscurity.

Evelyn Salz is the college archivist at Western New England College, Springfield, Massachuetts.